


A Critique of Bullying in the Devil May Cry Fandom

by sub_textual



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Criticism, Literary Theory, Meta, Other, Pro-Spardacest, Spardacest, Spardacest Week, TW: Incest, This is a series of essays that criticize the bullying in the DMC fandom, Transgressive literature, Tw: pedophilia, anti-antis, anti-bullying, be aware that there are a lot of triggering topics in these essays, tw: rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18683953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/pseuds/sub_textual
Summary: A series of essays concerning the bullying in the DMC fandom by antis who enjoy harassing creators for exploring a problematic trope in writing or art.Translations:Spanish





	1. fiction and art are not inherently abusive

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Una crítica del bullying en el fandom de Devil May Cry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18965005) by [akxmin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akxmin/pseuds/akxmin)



> I wrote these essays on Tumblr, and thought it would be a good idea to repost them here for easier perusal.

**Anonymous asked:** I just read your post about the depiction of incest of DMC fandom, and honestly... I see what you mean but you have to admit that not everyone who ships Dante with Nero or Vergil is exploring some deep and thoughtful analysis on how human psyche works, and problematic dynamics. I get what you mean, incest is indeed a trope in litterature, no one can deny that, but seeing smutty fan art and fanfiction, that are wrote just for the smut its really disturbing... I know it's a personnal opinion

* * *

 

Hello, Anon. Thank you for being respectful about how you approached me with your response to my [post regarding incest in DMC](http://subtextually.tumblr.com/post/183748025833/please-stop-incest-shipping-in-dmc).  This is the way proper dialogue should occur among fans with differing views: with respect and grace. This is the proper way to have a conversation.

It is true that not all fans who approach incestuous shipping in DMC are doing so because they are drawn to the neo-classical resonances and the allegorical allusions that they read in _Devil May Cry_ ’s overarching narrative. Some may simply be drawn to the profane, transgressive nature of incestuous dynamics; others may enjoy amorally producing _l’art pour l’art_ , art for art’s sake, to tell a story of taboo romantic or sexual consanguineous attraction between brothers or blood relatives. Yet, even more may be exploring an aspect of their own sexuality which may be fundamentally transgressive in nature: fantasizing about what perhaps may seem to be the greatest sin of all. 

In _[A Preface to Transgression](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fmonoskop.org%2Fimages%2Fa%2Fa3%2FFoucault_Michel_1963_1977_A_Preface_to_Transgression.pdf&t=ZGNkNjMxM2FhYmZiYWI5YWZkYjBiZDQzZGFkM2UwODczYjJmYjFiYyxyU2U0eEZqcQ%3D%3D&b=t%3Azw16ujTKpdTzSdHmemQmnQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsubtextually.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F184091504483%2Fi-just-read-your-post-about-the-depiction-of&m=1)_ , Michel Foucault writes, “Transgression opens onto a scintillating and constantly affirmed world, a world without shadow or twilight, without that serpentine ‘no’ that bites into fruits and lodges their contradictions at their core. It is the solar inversion of satanic denial. It was originally linked to the divine, or rather, from this limit marked by the sacred it opens the space where the divine functions,” ( _Language, Counter-memory, Practice_ 37) . What Foucault is addressing is that the limits of sexuality were created by the arbitrariness of Christian morality, which delineated the lines of modern day ethics and governs our current puritanical approach to sexuality. There is an ethics of sexuality, of what forms of sexuality are acceptable, what types of fantasy are allowed. 

With the rise of Tumblr, a rampantly hypocritical approach toward the governance of sexual morality has formed in recent years: on one hand, young bloggers shout to the heavens about the importance of accepting alternative sexualities and kink; yet, on the other, any expression of any transgressive sexuality viewed as inherently abusive, destructive, or otherwise “ethically wrong,” even in the service of art or fiction, must be violently, vehemently put down. Across the internet, creators have had to begin censoring themselves out of fear of being doxxed or otherwise having to stomach vitriolic, abusive language flung in their direction; fans who previously wanted to explore their fantasies in writing or art no longer feel safe enough to even express that they have these fantasies at all. They feel shame and revulsion towards themselves, not having an outlet for expression, not wanting to bear the consequences of having them at all.

Yet, the hypocrisy lies in fandom’s overwhelming approach to fan works as a whole: on one hand, stories that glorify bestiality via alpha/beta/omega dynamics are absolutely acceptable; rape as a trope continues to be rampant and overwhelmingly uncriticized; problematic depictions of seme/uke tropes, as well as incredibly dangerous and incorrect depictions of BDSM dynamics are championed as incredibly hot. There is no outcry for the objectification of queerness, or the queering of otherwise canonically straight characters by writers who are neither queer themselves nor even have any real understanding of the many challenges that come with being queer in the first place. Graphically visceral depictions of violence, torture, and murder, and fantasies such as vore or guro are overwhelmingly ignored. 

But the moment a fan in the _Devil May Cry_ fandom wants to write about a **completely consensual** incestuous dynamic in a canon that is rife with such tropes, suddenly the flood gates open and every single _Devil May Cry_ fan descends with puritanical rage, decrying the creator. They contend that the creators are “gross,” “disgusting,” and should be “ashamed” of themselves; they demand that the creators stop creating such “abusive” content, while simultaneously enjoying A/B/O dynamics where the Omega may be in heat and therefore in an altered state and cannot honestly consent. They don’t bat a lash when stories of tentacle rape and other forms of sexual assault arise in fan art or fan fiction. Somehow, it’s totally fine for a fan to depict Lady or Trish being violently assaulted by Urizen’s tentacles. But consensual incest is a taboo that they cannot seem to tolerate, even though Tumblr offers the option of blocking the content that they find unpleasant, or using the filter function to ensure they can’t see it at all. Frankly, Anon, this is bullshit.

If you do not want to engage with creators who want to explore incestuous dynamics for _any reason at all_ — whether it be because they, like myself, are writing in the same milieu as Ovid, Shakespeare, Nabokov, and other writers who came before us who also amorally explored consensual incest; or because they are merely trying to express a fantasy mediated through the safety and constraints of fiction or art — then don’t. Use the block function. Use Tumblr’s filters, like I did, for blocking all DMC character/Reader art and fiction, which I find inherently weird. If you want to say that seeing such forms of creation are not your cup of tea, you are completely within your rights. But for heaven’s sake, to come after creators with abusive language and death threats is not only hypocritical and irrational, but it is completely immature and reeks of a lack of critical thought, education, and good manners. 

Let me be absolutely clear about one thing: fiction and art are not inherently abusive. Representations of [transgressive topics in fiction](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTransgressive_fiction&t=NDNkMGU2N2U0NjQyNjE1MTk1MGM1ZGI5ZTg2NWY3NThkMzFjYmZjNyxyU2U0eEZqcQ%3D%3D&b=t%3Azw16ujTKpdTzSdHmemQmnQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsubtextually.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F184091504483%2Fi-just-read-your-post-about-the-depiction-of&m=1) [or art ](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTransgressive_art&t=YzAzMTJhNmE5Mjk0ZGQyNzY1NGZkNDUwNmYyMGFkZjdmYmMwZDk4ZSxyU2U0eEZqcQ%3D%3D&b=t%3Azw16ujTKpdTzSdHmemQmnQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsubtextually.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F184091504483%2Fi-just-read-your-post-about-the-depiction-of&m=1)— such as pre-pubescent child sexuality between twelve year olds in Shakesperare’s _Romeo and Juliet_ ; rape and filicide in Toni Morrison’s _Beloved_ ; hebephilia in Vladimir Nabokov’s _Lolita_ ; consensual incest in Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ , Shakespeare’s _Twelfth Night_ , Nabokov’s _Ada or Ardor_ , and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ — do not in fact perform an act of violence. They do not condone, they do not perpetuate any sort of larger culture of abuse. 

When a writer or artist creates, they do so because they want to tell a story. They represent the characters, and the narrative they set out to explore, with fidelity to what they believe to be the story that they are creating. Whether that story is one that explores the profanely, transgressive incestuous love between twin brothers, or one that depicts a pornographic fantasy of said brothers, neither the story itself nor its creator is engaging in an act of abuse or violence upon anyone within the real world. Nor is the story, or its creator, condoning the transgression, which should only _ever_ remain within the realm of the fantastical: where art and fiction resides. 

As creators, we do not have a responsibility to Tumblr’s overwhelming belief that it must police any forms of transgressive fantasy or sexuality that it deems to be unethical or immoral. The whole point of transgressive literature and art is specifically to transgress the limits and boundaries of ethics in the first place. All creators of such works are extremely aware of the “wrongness” of it, yet our fidelity is not to Tumblr. It is to the characters and to the stories we want to represent.

As Jen Michalski [writes in this article](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fthenervousbreakdown.com%2Fjmichalski%2F2016%2F08%2Fthe-hard-truths-of-writing-incest-in-fiction%2F&t=MDAzYzljMjQ0NjBkZWE1OWFiMWMzNWQ5YzY3ZTA2OTA3OWZjYjUxNixyU2U0eEZqcQ%3D%3D&b=t%3Azw16ujTKpdTzSdHmemQmnQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsubtextually.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F184091504483%2Fi-just-read-your-post-about-the-depiction-of&m=1), “Our stories are our children, our art. Sometimes they’re our legacy. But we don’t speak for the world, or a group, or sometimes even ourselves when we write fiction. In the end, we’re speaking for the people on the pages. We make sure their voice is heard—all of the ugly, searing, beautiful, and hard truths. And maybe we learn a little about ourselves, as well, in the process.” 


	2. "please stop shipping incest" in DMC

**"please stop shipping incest" in DMC**

Actually, no.

There’s something to be said about the fact that incest is taboo, but it is a _human_ one at that. Considering that neither Dante nor Vergil are human, and are actually arguably now more demon than they are human, given the circumstances of DMC5 (if Sin Devil Trigger is anything to go by), human taboos therefore should not apply to them.

Even if they _weren’t_ demons, and were instead full-blooded humans, there actually is nothing wrong with the active enjoyment of exploring such a trope via art or writing. We can think of pairings such as Hera and Zeus; Izanagi and Izanami; Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi in the canons of both Greek and Japanese mythology. We might also consider Greek works such as Sophocles’ _Oedipus Rex_ or Ovid’s _Metamorphoses;_ or turn to early modern English plays such as John Ford’s _Tis Pity She’s a Whore_ ; Spenser’s _The Faerie Queene_ ; Shakespeare’s _Pericles, The Tempest, Hamlet, King Lear, Cymbeline_ , or _Titus Andronicus_. While the majority of these representations of incest have depicted it as something problematic and troubling, morally and fundamentally wrong, it is the wrongness of it that we can find enthusiastically explored in twentieth century literature by writers such as Vladimir Nabokov, whose amoral approach to it in both _Pale Fire_ and _Ada_ forces the reader to reach their own moral conclusions about the text. (Nabokov most famously takes the same approach with pedophilia in _Lolita_ – his narrator glorifies his terrible, nauseating choices in the most beautiful prose while the reader must decide whether to sympathize with Humbert Humbert or vilify him.) Gabriel García Márquez even won a Nobel Prize for literature for _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ , which uncritically depicts an incestuous relationship.

In popular literature and manga, incest has been explored amorally by the likes of Anne Rice in both her _Vampire Chronicles_ and _Mayfair Witches_ series; Jim Butcher’s _The Dresden Files_ ; Kaori Yuki’s _Angel Sanctuary_ ; Tsutomu Satou’s _Irregular at Magic High School_ ; Bisco Hatori’s _Ouran High School Host Club_ (which actually features twincest); and most famously, George R.R. Martin’s _Game of Thrones_. These are but a few examples of many more that I am certain can be found in popular media. In virtually all of these works, it can be understood implicitly by the reader that incest is not something that should be glorified or considered as morally right; but there is a certain thrill that comes with exploring the wrongness of it all. We are troubled by Jamie and Cersei’s relationship in _Game of Thrones_ ; we find it horrifying, but we also find ourselves sympathizing with Jamie’s tremendous, unnatural love for his twin sister which defies the laws of human nature.

I’d like to emphasize the idea of the “unnatural” here, and bring the focus back to fandom and _Devil May Cry_. Ostensibly, DMC is a work that explores the tension between humanity and the unnatural, and Capcom gave us a narrative rife with classical tropes that underpin its entirety.

Indeed, one might only consider how many times Vergil penetrates Dante with his sword, or the pathological focus with which he seeks power in the name of love, for us to tease out an implication that Capcom did in fact intend for close readers to enjoy, should they choose to do so. We might also think of how DMC3 actively calls to attention the “twisted pleasure” Dante and Vergil gain from their “ _brotherly_ fighting”; the animators’ choice to depict close-ups of how Dante’s hand wraps around his brother’s sword as it is stabbed into his body; how the narrative forces us to confront the fact that they are one soul split in two. Indeed, these aspects of the master narrative _cannot_ be simply chalked up as an oversight by Capcom, when they are well aware of the kind of derivative works (see: yaoi doujinshi) that would certainly emerge from their emphasis of such an overdetermined trope.

This isn’t to say that Capcom intended for incest to be canon in DMC; rather, that they were conscious of its visibility within the narrative as a classical trope. Indeed, DMC has many of the hallmarks of classical epic literature, and is also significantly influenced by Dante Alghieri’s _The Divine Comedy_ , where we find Dante’s _Inferno_. In this classic epic, we are given a Dante who descends into Hell with Virgil (author of _The Aeneid_ ) as his guide. In Alghieri’s _Inferno_ , Virgil’s ghost is a representation of reason, and protects Dante in his journey through Hell. Sound a little familiar? Well, it should. My argument here isn’t that there’s somehow an incestuous trope in _The Divine Comedy_ – there isn’t. Rather, I am calling to attention the classical tropes that are rife throughout the DMC narrative, among which do in fact include – whether you like it or not and want to be completely oblivious to it – an overt incestuous trope in the master narrative.  

Now, I know what you might thinking: well, she’s just a gross brotherfucker shipper who doesn’t understand how moralistically repugnant and atrociously problematic this ship is, like everyone else who ships any combination of Spardas. You would be incredibly incorrect there. Like virtually every other fan in this fandom who enjoys Spardacest, I find real incest to be as repulsive and problematic as anyone else. But this isn’t real incest. And it isn’t even human. And considering that it is, in fact, a trope in the narrative, one that asks for exploration, there is actually nothing morally wrong with exploring it as such.

Again, none of us are saying that incest is good. Nor are we saying that it’s unproblematic. We know it is. We know how wrong it is. We know how unnatural it is. But there is nothing about DMC that is natural to begin with. And that, my fellow fans, is what we want to explore: an unnatural love between brothers that, as Oscar Wilde might say, “dare not speak its name.”

Essentially it comes down to this: tldr; incest has existed in literature since pretty much the beginning of recorded history. It is a trope people are into exploring. If you don’t like it, there’s always the “block” button. But don’t vilify others for exploring what they want to explore.

Frankly, that isn’t very mature.

But then again, there are a bunch of you out there that are into consensual non-consensual rape fic, or just straight up rape fic, which, as a survivor of rape, I just don’t get. And then there’s others of you who are into a/b/o and mpreg and don’t get me _started_ on the implications of forced heteronormativity and bestiality in that. But hey, whatever. That’s your jam. I’m not going to harsh your squee if that’s the kind of narrative you want to explore.


	3. A Case for Transgressive Literature

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TW:** rape, pedophilia

I have been thinking a lot about transgressive fiction and the ways in which puritanical sexual moralists on Tumblr react to it, especially in the  _Devil May Cry_  fandom. 

One of the most common arguments against the production and dissemination of transgressive fiction is the notion that it somehow will re-traumatize survivors of abuse, rape, incest, etc. simply through its very existence. This argument is most often posited by individuals who are not, in fact, survivors of any of the aforementioned traumatic experiences, which, as an actual survivor of rape and pedophilia, I find to be deeply disturbing. As I read vitriolic rants of how fictional media that dares venture into the realm of the transgressive re-traumatizes victims of the transgression they are exploring in their works, I think to myself: Who the fuck are these people, these strange faceless social justice warriors, who think that they can speak for me and my actual lived experience? Who are these white knights in armor I never asked for, coming in on a high moral horse, trying to dictate what forms of fiction are “safe” and what are necessarily dangerous and otherwise destructive, with actual consequences in the real world? Who are these righteous ethical police who feel they have the right to determine what forms of fantasy are allowed to be explored in service to sexuality, and how it is depicted? 

I will tell you this: as a multiple time survivor of pedophilia and rape, I do not find anything wrong with stories that explore such trauma. I can still read Shakespeare without finding myself endlessly re-traumatized every time rape occurs in one of his plays. And you know what’s crazy?  I can also read Nabokov’s _Lolita_ and enjoy it, even though he does not depict pedophilia and rape as something horrifying, nor does he actually even explore the trauma, as that particular book is written from the perspective of the rapist and opens with: 

> “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.” 

You see, the thing about transgressive fiction is that it forces the reader to confront their own set of personal ethics and their own morals. It challenges them to come to their own conclusions about the text, even if the narrative is needlessly erotic in nature, downright pornographic. Nabokov does have such passages that would constitute pornography in _Lolita_. Yet the graphic depiction of the eroticism in gorgeous, poetic prose is rarely ever criticized by anyone other than the moral police who want to ban such forms of literature for its obscenity. In fact, _Lolita_ was banned, for some time, as was _Ada, Or Ardor_ which depicts a loving, consensual incestuous relationship between a brother and sister. 

What many of these uncritical, unapologetic moralists fail to recognize is that transgressive literature has always existed. Pushing the limits of what is acceptable and sexually ethical is something that writers have always done. There is a huge difference between fantasizing about rape or a taboo such as incest, and actually carrying it out in real life. We know, for example, that murder is something horrifying and quite possibly the greatest sin a human can commit against another. Yet, we revel in the gore we see in shounen anime such as in _Naruto_ ; we enjoy films such as _American Psycho_ , and we have a blast watching shows such as _Game of Thrones,_ which also, incidentally depicts a loving, consensual incestuous relationship between Jaimie and Cersei, but somehow that’s okay because it’s on HBO. We apologize for vampires who murder humans, because hey — they’re vampires. Damon Salvatore from _The Vampire Diaries_ isn’t really a psychotic murdering asshole who brutally kills hundreds of innocent humans. He’s just a _vampire_ , and that makes it okay. It’s not real, so therefore such forms of media are allowed to be consumed, even when you have a serial killer who is ostensibly over a hundred years old, in a relationship with a seventeen-year-old high school girl, graphically having sex with her on the CW network. That’s just hot because he looks young, right? Uh? Hello? Are you _hearing_ yourself? 

Yet when fans create the same types of stories, the same lurid, romanticized narratives that explore such taboos, that dare to write amorally from the character’s perspective to try and maybe understand how it’s possible for a pair of twins who are actually half-demon to fall in love with one another, it’s suddenly the worst possible crime Tumblr has ever seen in fandom. Somehow, according to these moral police, unlike virtually all of the works that came before it on television, in film, and in literature, these works are dangerous and “glorify” incest or otherwise “normalize” and “apologize” for the culture in which it emerges.

The lack of critical thought that goes into such an argument is _astounding._ And [I’m not going to rehash the amount of hypocrisy](http://subtextually.tumblr.com/post/184091504483/i-just-read-your-post-about-the-depiction-of) that goes into such moral lambasting when the same puritans who reject all other forms of transgressive fiction are writing about knotting and heat cycles in A/B/O fics. 

What it comes down to is this: [transgressive fiction has always existed](http://subtextually.tumblr.com/post/184093989003/saw-some-of-the-discourse-about-shipping-in-the), and is among some of the most respected in Western culture. Producing transgressive fan fiction in the same milieu, even when it’s pornographic and for the sake of sexual exploration or fantasy, does not commit an act of violence upon anyone. In order for violence to occur, there must be an individual willing to carry it out. The work itself does inherently, by itself, commit an act of trauma upon anyone, and in order for a survivor to be re-traumatized, we actually have to engage with the text itself and subject ourselves to it. 

There is a reason why tag systems exist, and why they should be used to filter out anything that anyone might find potentially triggering. I suffer from C-PTSD as a result of the trauma I experienced and survived, and so I do in fact avoid such fics by simply not reading them. But as I mentioned before, what I do not do is contact creators of such works who are safely exploring these fantasies within the constraints of literature, and tell them that they need to go to hell, or that they are bad people, or that they should kill themselves. I do not castigate them for exploring transgression, and I do not ever tell them to stop creating it. I do not send anyone abusive messages or otherwise bully them online. 

There is nothing wrong with having fantasies and kinks that you might not be able to understand or make sense of, so long as it is explored in a manner that does not hurt anyone in the real world. Depicting rape or incest in literature is not the same as condoning it; depicting murder or torture is not the same as normalizing it. Writing about two men knotting and breeding is not somehow suggesting that bestiality is, in fact, okay. (For the record: I am _really_ not into A/B/O, but guess what? I respect people who are.) 

I will say this one last time: Writing is not condoning. Get it through your head. 

As for me, I’m going to go write more Dante/Vergil fanfic, and there’s literally nothing you can say that is going to stop me from wanting to do so, because guess what? They’re not real.[ They aren’t even human.](http://subtextually.tumblr.com/post/183748025833/please-stop-incest-shipping-in-dmc) And my transgressive fanfic is not hurting anyone by its mere existence. It exists within the realm of fantasy, and should remain there, where it belongs.  


	4. If you don’t like it, don’t engage

****Anonymous asked:** **Saw some of the Discourse about shipping in the DMC fandom; figured I'd add my two cents. I've been in the fandom for years. Incest shipping has always been here. Are there things that squick me? Hell yes. But that's no reason to try and burn someone at the stake. Quite frankly, all the purity culture has made me go spite read (and then quite honestly kudos) a lot of "wrong" fic. I gotta say, there's a lot of superb writing out there that so does not deserve hate.

* * *

 

**Totally agree with you, Anon!**

Even if the writing isn’t great, it’s still not any reason to send hateful messages to another human being. This is a piece of art that someone spent time on. **If you don’t like it, don’t engage – simply block it, scroll past it, or use your filter functions.** It’s not hard. Really. 

I honestly don’t understand the uncritical, puritanical policing of fan-made content as though fictional and artistic content itself has some sort of anthropomorphic destructive force that can actually perpetuate harm in the real world. Transgressive art and fiction has existed for centuries. No one tried to burn Shakespeare at the stake for writing about the following things:

  * Sex between twelve year olds, followed by suicide ( _Romeo and Juliet)_
  * Incest ( _Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, King Lear, Pericles, Measure for Measure, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest)_
  * Twincest ( _Twelfth Night)_
  * Rape ( _Titus Andronicus, The Rape of Lucrece, Coriolanus, Henry V, Henry VI,  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, Perciles, The Tempest)  
_
  * Bestiality ( _A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello)_



Overwhelmingly, Shakespearean plays are transgressive; sometimes graphically so. There is no denying that the depiction of Lavinia’s rape in _Titus Andronicus_ is unbelievably horrifying and graphic – yet, why is there no condemnation of Shakespeare’s supposed glorification of the matter? Shakespeare is overwhelmingly studied in literature courses worldwide; no one would dare think to call his works a “perpetuation of rape culture” or somehow otherwise guilty of condoning incest, even in plays where incest is not portrayed as something repulsive and morally wrong. 

So, if it’s okay to enjoy Shakespeare and Ovid and all these other wonderful, respected writers – some of whom _very graphically, brazenly, and amorally_ wrote transgressive fiction – then why is it so wrong for fans to create pretty much the same exact thing? Are you really going to argue that it’s okay for these dead white men to be championed for their transgressive fiction while simultaneously telling a fan to kill themselves for being so gross and into shipping incest? And again, why is it that depictions of bestiality (aka A/B/O) and rape are totally okay in fan works but incest is not? 

As I’ve said before, [the hypocrisy is staggering. ](http://subtextually.tumblr.com/post/184091504483/i-just-read-your-post-about-the-depiction-of)


	5. Narratives only come alive at the moment of literary reception

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An Anon thought it was a good idea to try and argue with me about invoking Nabokov's _Lolita_ when making a case for fictional representations of incest in the DMC fandom. This is what happened.

**Anonymous asked:** You know Lolita wasn’t romanticizing Humbert Humbert’s creeping on Dolores, right? I mean maybe the movie was which is disgusting, but the book was portraying pedophilia as what it was, a crime. Humbert was not a character the reader should look up to.

* * *

 

Hi Anon,

It has long been accepted by literary critics, as well as argued by Nabokov himself, that _Lolita_ is not meant to be an indictment of Humbert Humbert’s actions — nor is it meant to portray pedophilia as a “crime,” as you say.  Michael Woods suggests that “ _Lolita_ …presents itself as a textual game, insists not only on its verbal but on its written quality,” (15)  Alfred J. Appel argues, “ _Lolita_ is not merely about sexual perversion, but rather about love and the search for ineffable beauty, and as such…ultimately ‘about’ its own creation” (338); and Brenda Mergerle insists, “The consensus of _Lolita_ criticism is that the novel is ‘about’ art, not sex” (Ibid.) Indeed, _Lolita_ does not convict the moral failings of Humbert Humbert, nor does it guide the reader towards any sort of authorial intent. Rather, _Lolita_ forces the reader to come to their own personal conclusions about the text itself.

What is particularly unsettling about _Lolita_ is its ability to seduce the reader into identifying or sympathizing with Humbert Humbert. Nomi Tamir-Ghez explains, “What enraged or at least disquieted most readers and critics was the fact that they found themselves unwittingly accepting, even sharing, the feelings of Humbert Humbert, the novel’s narrator and protagonist… Instead of passing moral judgement on this man who violated a deep-rooted sexual and social taboo, they caught themselves identifying with him” (65). Such identification creates an uncomfortable, shocking dynamic between the reader and the novel; between the reader and their own set of socio-sexual morals; between the reader and their understanding of themselves. It forces them to interrogate the “why” and the “how” between such identification. Lionel Trilling argues: “in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents…we have been seduced into conniving in the violation, because we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we know to be revolting” (Ibid.) 

Part of what makes _Lolita_ fascinating is the psychological impact it has on the reader through its literary seduction; the ways in which it is able to coerce the reader to participate, and even unwittingly condone Humbert Humbert’s horrific actions. This, Anon, is precisely Nabokov’s goal: not to indict the narrator, but rather, to indict the _reader_ — forcing them to confront and re-examine themselves and their own emotional involvement as the mediator through which Humbert Humbert enacts his crime. We become unknowingly complicit accomplices through the performative act of reading: the text itself is not a living thing; nor is the author. Narratives only come alive at the moment of literary reception, hypostasized by the reader’s understanding of the text itself. We might think of Roland Barthes’ argument in _The Death of the Author:_

> In this way is revealed the whole being of writing: a text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of; the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination; but this destination can no longer be personal: the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology; he is only that someone who holds gathered into a single field all the paths of which the text is constituted. (6) 

In other words, the only thing that exists at the moment of literary reception is not the writer, nor the text, but the reader: the reader is the conduit through which all meaning flows. The reader performs the act of reading, and by doing so, creates their own understanding to and relationship with the text. To suggest that one can find Nabokov “in the text” as a New Critic might believe is false: no text is self-contained, as it interacts with the reader, and requires a reader to “create” it through their engagement with it. Moreover, Nabokov himself vehemently opposes any such readings of his work: he spent most of his life insisting that he only ever wanted to tell a story that was divorced from any kind of pre-determined set of moral schoolings. Indeed, the point of _Lolita_ is not to school the reader or to force any sort of response, other than to hold up a mirror to the reader as they become complicit in recreating _Lolita’s_ trauma via the act of reading itself. 

Now, here’s the thing, Anon: I know you are not asking me to actually explain to you how incredibly wrong you were in your assumptions of what _Lolita_ represents and how it performs within the social consciousness of literary criticism. Rather, you wanted me to somehow admit to you that the crimes Humbert Humbert carries out are vile and terrible, and therefore any eroticism that engages with sexual transgression should ultimately be an indictment of the transgression, as opposed to any kind of perceived glorification or sympathizing with the transgression itself. You are doing so, because you want to somehow passive aggressively instruct me to only write about incest between Dante/Vergil as something that is vile and abusive, as opposed to exploring it, like Nabokov does in _Ada, Or Ador_ , as the greatest “love which dare not speak its name,” as Oscar Wilde might put it. (Incidentally, Wilde actually coined the phrase in reference to pederastic Greek love as examined by Plato. How apropos to the situation we find ourselves, that Wilde calls such a taboo “love.”) 

As you can clearly see, you have ultimately failed in your quest, and you will continue to fail because you do not have the critical know-how, experience, nor interest in engaging with transgression in literature as anything other than a crime, and thus attempted to posit a false reading of Nabokov that is grossly incorrect. At the end of the day, the text does not perform the work of reading; nor does the author even exist in the text at all. The only thing that matters is the reader, and their understanding and engagement with the text itself. Like Barthes says, “This is why it is absurd to hear the new writing condemned in the name of a humanism which hypocritically appoints itself the champion of the reader’s rights” (Ibid.)

_Works Cited_

Appel, Alfred J. qtd in “ _Lolita_ Revisited.” ( _New England Review_ , Vol. 17, No. 3, 1995, 15-43)  
Barthes, Roland trans. by Richard Howard. _The Death of the Author._ ( _[UbuWeb Papers](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Ftbook.constantvzw.org%2Fwp-content%2Fdeath_authorbarthes.pdf&t=YTQ2Mjc2Mzk4YzQzMTFiYWYzYTNlM2YwZmNlZjE1M2ViMDM0YjZiZSx3bm5hZVdVSw%3D%3D&b=t%3Azw16ujTKpdTzSdHmemQmnQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsubtextually.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F184180840318%2Fyou-know-lolita-wasnt-romanticizing-humbert&m=1)_ )   
Megerle, Brenda. “The Tantalization of _Lolita.”_ ( _Studies in the Novel,_ Vol. 11, No. 3 1979, 338-348)  
Tamir-Ghez, Nomi. “The Art of Persuasion in Nabokov’s _Lolita.”_ ( _Poetics Today_ , Vol 1, No. ½ 1979, 65-83)  
Trilling, Lionel qtd in “The Art of Persuasion in Nabokov’s _Lolita.”_ (Ibid.)  
Wood, Michael. “ _Lolita_ Revisited.” ( _New England Review_ , Vol. 17, No. 3, 1995, 15-43)


	6. How do you write responsibly about anything at all?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TW:** mentions of rape, incest, pedophilia

**Anonymous asked:** how would you recommend going about writing topics that might be a little more triggery without romanticizing them? would you say you can write something and portray it in a good light without romanticizing it?

* * *

 

 

I think it honestly depends on what you mean by “triggery.”

If it’s something like incest, which could, in fact, be consensual (as we have seen throughout the course of human history) it is not so difficult to actually write about it in a way that’s authentic, from the character’s point of view. Writing from a limited point of view entrenches us in the character’s thoughts, feelings, and world view.  We are able to explore the nuances of the character’s humanity, and do our best to represent them authentically.

Arguably, this would be considered “romanticizing,” as there is no actual critique of what is happening within the narrative. As readers, we fundamentally understand the wrongness of a taboo like incest, we are repulsed by it; but the character who participates in the incestuous relationship might not necessarily feel the same way.

In fact, it is entirely possible to explore the character’s struggle as they attempt to reconcile their emotions and desire for their sibling with the wrongness of the relationship. This is certainly more likely if the characters are human and live within a society defined by morals that govern our modern day ethos of sexuality.

When writing about the violation of consent, such as rape or pedophilia,  I don’t believe that it is actually possible to portray it in a “positive light” without romanticization.  We could, for example, consider Nabokov’s example in Lolita with Humbert Humbert. ([I write about it extensively here.](https://subtextually.tumblr.com/post/184180840318/you-know-lolita-wasnt-romanticizing-humbert)) Lolita’s portrayal of pedophilia is shockingly gorgeous and poetic, and what makes it so compelling and disturbing is the way it seduces readers into identifying and sympathizing with the perpetrator.

But what should be noted is that Nabokov himself does not romanticize the narrator’s atrocious actions; rather, the narrator is the catalyst behind the romanticization, the one who attempts to justify and normalize his deviant sexuality and vindicate himself of any blame. It is up to the reader to come to their own conclusions about the text, which is fundamental to the reception of all literature.

The question of consent and how to represent its violation is one that is incredibly fraught and difficult. On one hand, Tumblr tells us that we must always write responsibly with respect to the victim, as to prevent further trauma, victimization, normalization of the violence or  romanticizing the act. Tumblr’s particular band of puritanical social justice does not tolerate the idea of representing transgression as anything other than what it is: a transgression that must be criticized by the author in the text, that must be treated as the horrific act it truly is.

But, these false warriors of social justice tolerate the visceral, glorified representations of violence and murder in fiction; it is okay for human life to be treated as an afterthought so long as the living characters are not violated by anything other than torture, dismemberment, disembowlment, or murder. They revel in ribald descriptions of men in the throes of heat, who require breeding from an alpha, while failing to recognize the bestial aspects of the A/B/O genre.

Tumblr’s moral compass is staggeringly skewed in its hypocrisy. How is it okay to romanticize bestiality reworked through the lens of A/B/O-verse while not romanticizing anything else? How do you write responsibly about anything at all?

Frankly: you don’t.

While I personally might never understand a fanfic that contains a glorified, uncritical representation of rape from the perspective of the victim, I understand that rape fantasies are something that many people do in fact have and do not condemn them for it. So long as the fantasy stays within the safety of the realm of the fantastical, complete with its trigger warnings and appropriate tags, and never, ever crosses into the real world, I see nothing wrong with exploring this type of transgression in art or literature.

Sure, I might personally not want to read it because I have in fact experienced it in real life. But, that does not mean that I will condemn anyone for wanting to write it or explore it as a fantasy. I understand implicitly that writing is not condoning the act. And unless I see an author trying to vindicate the act in their author’s notes or elsewhere, I do not indict the author for their fantasy.

As a writer, your only responsibility is to your narrative and to your characters. It is not to your readers, nor to any sort of morality. You do not have to provide a critique of sexual transgression, or violence, or even murder or genocide in your writing, because you do not exist within the text: only the reader and their understanding of the narrative is what is at play here. Let the reader come to their own conclusions about your writing. Let them form their own opinions about the text.  

As Barthes might say, “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.”


End file.
